Jon Radoff talks "Space Empire Elite" and "Final Frontier"

[Kirkman]

Have you guys seen the new mobile game Star Trek Timelines from Disruptor Beam? The CEO of the company is Jon Radoff, who was part of the Atari ST BBS scene in the late 1980s.

 

He wrote perhaps the most famous Atari ST door games: Space Empire Elite and Final Frontier.

What a way for a career to come full-circle: From "Final Frontier" to "Star Trek Timelines."

Anyway, I've been wanting to talk with him about these games for years. I first played SEE as a kid in the 1990s on Flash BBS in St. Louis.

 

Anyway, if you're interested, check out the interview here:

http://breakintochat.com/blog/2016/02/02/jon-radoff-creator-of-space-empire-elite-and-final-frontier/

Edited February 2, 2016 by Kirkman

[Tillek]

Wow... kinda funny because I was just thinking that it would make a good interview for you!

 

Sorry Final Frontier isn't working.... when I had to move to the TT some games that were working on the Falcon stopped working (then again, some that stopped working when I went to the Falcon started working again on the TT????? So Stellar Chaos will be back up sometime tomorrow). I redid the game menu so everything on there should be working fine.

 

Also, thanks for finding a slightly newer version of SEE... I'll be upgrading from SEE 11.37 to 11.37a right before Wednesday night's midnight maintenance... (People were actually playing... after I fixed the issue with the TT serial port!)

 

Gotta love debugging!

 

Actually, if we can generate enough interest might consider an SEE tournament with a $25-50 prize (Depending on interest and how long we'd run it).

 

Still though, I wish the code was still out there. I'd love to be able to try to fix FFII, or do newer versions of some of the old games.

 

Or a registered version of Assassin!

 

Alas, I dream.

 

But thanks for the work you're doing for the BBS community. I look forward to reading the article.

[+DarkLord]

I wish the code for all those great BBS games was available. I also wish I had managed to register *all* of

the games we've got on DarkForce before the authors abandoned them. I did get a few done.

 

Great interview. Love reading stuff like this - thanks for the link!

 

PS What's wrong with FF2? Works here.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

This should be added to Atarimania base.

[Tillek]

I wish the code for all those great BBS games was available. I also wish I had managed to register *all* of

the games we've got on DarkForce before the authors abandoned them. I did get a few done.

 

Great interview. Love reading stuff like this - thanks for the link!

 

PS What's wrong with FF2? Works here.

It just doesn't work. When you go to run it, the machine just freezes. I can still hear the keyboard clicking if I press keys but the time doesn't keep displaying and nothing else. I know it accesses the player file because the date stamp changes but there are no errors, bombs, or entry in the error log files, so no way to figure out what is going on. I can Ctrl-Alt-Del to reset it. I'm just chalking it up to not working on the TT and hope it fixes itself when I get it on the right machine (which should be this weekend, hopefully).

 

A couple games stopped working when I had to move to the TT... I fixed SEE by moving the Lantronix to modem 1 (which limits me to 19200 ). But I'm not going to worry about the other games too much until I get the Mega STE back. (Everything on the new temp menu should work).

[+DarkLord]

Hmm, honestly I had never tried to run it on anything besides my Mega ST. I can remember a couple of BBS Express ST SysOps

using TT's back when the BBS Express ST support board was still up and running but I don't remember anything specific about

what ran and didn't run.

 

Remind me - is FF2 one of those programs that you can run "stand alone", in other words, without it being launched from within

the BBS program you're using? Seems like I remember it can be. You've probably already tried it like that but I was just wondering

what happened then... Odd that the log doesn't show anything (well, maybe not if it's hardware incompatibility).

[Tillek]

Hmm, honestly I had never tried to run it on anything besides my Mega ST. I can remember a couple of BBS Express ST SysOps

using TT's back when the BBS Express ST support board was still up and running but I don't remember anything specific about

what ran and didn't run.

 

Remind me - is FF2 one of those programs that you can run "stand alone", in other words, without it being launched from within

the BBS program you're using? Seems like I remember it can be. You've probably already tried it like that but I was just wondering

what happened then... Odd that the log doesn't show anything (well, maybe not if it's hardware incompatibility).

Well, I had a lot more games than I do now. I know for sure that they all worked on the Mega STE... when I brought it back and put it on the Falcon, a bunch of them didn't work. When I went to the TT, a couple others stopped working but then some of the ones that weren't working started working again.

 

Is what it is. So I decided not to mess with it anymore until I get the MegaSTE set up again. Which might be this weekend or sometime in 2018, depending..

[Lynxpro]

Two questions since this is an active thread:

 

*Do any ST terminal programs support ATASCII enough to convince any A8 BBS software into believing it's an A8 computer?

 

*Do any TT/Falcon terminal programs support full ANSI?

 

I'm trying to remember if I was still using Flash or STalker when I moved up to the Falcon or if I was using something else on it. I vividly recall accessing the net on my Falcon via Lynx/Gopher but later switched to PC when the web exploded in popularity. That and for Microsoft Word over AtariWorks.

[Tillek]

Two questions since this is an active thread:

 

*Do any ST terminal programs support ATASCII enough to convince any A8 BBS software into believing it's an A8 computer?

 

*Do any TT/Falcon terminal programs support full ANSI?

 

I'm trying to remember if I was still using Flash or STalker when I moved up to the Falcon or if I was using something else on it. I vividly recall accessing the net on my Falcon via Lynx/Gopher but later switched to PC when the web exploded in popularity. That and for Microsoft Word over AtariWorks.

I don't remember an ATASCII terminal for the ST (doesn't mean there wasn't one, I just don't remember ever using one).... however, if you have a PC and want a good ATASCII experience, SyncTerm (Windows) handles ATASCII very well and it is still being updated. http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/

 

To the second question, ANSITerm is my favorite full ANSI terminal program. It runs on the ST and Falcon (never tried it on a TT).

[+DarkLord]

Any one of these three will let you do ANSI on an ST:

 

TAZ

 

Freeze Dried Terminal

 

ANSITerm

 

HTHs.

[Tillek]

Yeah, but will they all do full color on a Tt or Falcon?

[Android8675]

Latest version of ICE-T for 8bits does ANSI color, 80col, no special hardware required, but the colors are limited to I think 6 colors...

[Tillek]

To actually get back to answering the question that you asked Lynxpro.... It looks like DualTerm supports ATASCII. I remember I used that terminal in the past, but in all honesty I have no memory of how well it handles it. But here is a place you can get it from. http://cd.textfiles.com/geminiatari/FILES/TELECOMM/DTE_102/

 

You might be able to find other versions in other places.